Chinese site bans Web tools used to evade filters!

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ibnlive.in.com / Associated Press / Posted on Aug 23, 2011 at 04:28pm IST.

Beijing: A major Chinese online commerce site has banned sales of software used to bypass Internet censorship amid Beijing's efforts to block the development of a Middle East-style protest movement.

But Taobao.com, part of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, said it took the action on its own and received no official order.

A notice on Taobao.com said virtual private networks and Internet protocol proxies were being used to illegally visit foreign websites. It told merchants that use the site to stop selling them and said the accounts of violaters might be cancelled.

China's government encourages Internet use for business and education but tries to block access to material deemed subversive or pornographic.

Beijing is especially uneasy about the Internet's potential to spread opposition to communist rule after social networking and other websites played a key role in protests that brought down governments in Egypt and Tunisia.

Full Story at,

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/chinese-site-bans-web-tools-used-to-evade-filters/177995-11.html

  

UNETHICAL STATE CENSOR: How good is India at patrolling the web?

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Jaimon Joseph, CNN-IBN / Updated Aug 16, 2011 at 06:00pm IST.

New Delhi: In the aftermath of the London riots, Britain considered tighter controls on the Internet, to prevent social unrest. How good is India at patrolling the web? Nikhil Pahwa, the Editor of www.Medianama.com recently tried uploading his holiday photos from Ladakh to a file sharing site to share it with friends. He couldn't do it because unknown to most of us, Internet Service Providers (ISP), had blocked all file sharing sites in the country, to prevent online piracy of the movie 'Singham'.

"Instead of blocking access only to the copyright infringement of 'Singham', everything was blocked. That's limiting my choice, my usage of services when I have done nothing wrong," Nikhil said.

Now, with a new set of IT rules for companies that connect people to the Internet, any content or any website the government objects to, can be blocked within 36 hours by sending a written note to an ISP. The rules cover any content deemed harmful, blasphemous, defamatory or obscene and anything that disrupts public order or threatens India's security.

Some legal experts suggest that these words are too ambiguous. For example, a big part of Anna Hazare's campaign was waged online. The question is whether the government could one day decide that it is a risk to public order and force it offline.

Recent reports suggest that the government will watch whatever one posts on Facebook and Twitter. The new IT rules allow the government to find out who we are, where we are and what we do on the net. Unusual, because till now, even for a simple telephone tap, the government needed authorisation from court.

Full Story at,

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/how-good-is-india-at-patrolling-the-web/176152-11.html

"AARAKSHAN": National SC/ST Commission sends summons to Leela Samson!

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Staff Reporter, The Hindu / MUMBAI, August 3, 2011.

The National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes has issued summons to Leela Samson, chairpersons of the Central Board of Film Certification, to appear before it on August 8 in connection with the upcoming Bollywood movie Aarakshan (Reservations).

Commission has called Ms. Samson to examine whether the movie violated any provision of the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, Sameer Bhujbal, MP and son of prominent Maharashtra OBC (other backward caste) leader Chhagan Bhujbal, said in a press statement on Tuesday.

Full Story at,

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2317223.ece

GOVERNANCE Vs. GOOGLE: India asked Google to block content critical of government

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Have you read, “Mayhem of the Miserables!” available @ http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52075

Vinay Kumar / The Hindu /  NEW DELHI, June 28, 2011.

The company logo is displayed at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. File photo - AP.

Number of content removal requests from the country up by 123 per cent

Are Indians allowed to use the Internet to criticise politicians and officials? If Google's latest ‘Transparency Report' is any indication, the police in some States don't seem to think so. In the last six months of 2010, law enforcement agencies across India asked the web search company to remove YouTube videos and a blog “that were critical of Chief Ministers and senior officials of different States.” Google says it did not comply with these requests.

In all, Google received 67 content removal requests from India between July and December 2010, covering a total of 282 items. Six of these requests were from courts and the rest from the executive, police and others.

The search engine said that 22 per cent of removal requests were fully or partially complied with, and the rest declined. It also received 1,699 “user data requests” from the government — euphemism for the police wanting a peek into the search and usage habits of targeted individuals — and complied with 79 per cent of these. However, no details were given.

Even Democratic Governments too act like Autocratic ones!

Full Story at,

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2142480.ece

Save free speech in cyberspace - Vivek Sengupta in Deccan Chronicle!

Brickbats, Bouquets & Backfeeds are welcome on prmadhura@yahoo.com

“Freedom is in peril. Defend it with all your might.” That was the slogan that was carried atop the masthead of National Herald, the newspaper that Jawaharlal Nehru founded in 1938 (it shut shop in 2008).

The slogan was written in Nehru’s elegant hand and bespoke the first Prime Minister’s commitment to free speech.

Today, that freedom is imperilled by the Internet Control Rules introduced recently with relative despatch.

These rules are omnibus. They are inadequately defined. Where the Internet is concerned, they have the potential to turn India into a police state, no freer than China. And we had thought that the rise of the Internet marked the break of a new dawn of freedom.

Particularly pernicious are the intermediaries’ liability rules. Intermediaries are the purveyors of third-party content on the Internet and include Internet Service Providers (ISPs), portals of all kinds, social networks, search engines, blogging platforms and Web-hosting service providers.

According to the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011, notified under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, intermediaries enjoy exemption from liability for the third-party content they host provided they observe due diligence. And how are they to exercise due diligence?

That is where the problems arise.

Intermediaries, for instance, have to ensure that users do not put out content that, among other things, “is grossly harmful, harassing, blasphemous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, libellous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically objectionable, disparaging, relating or encouraging money laundering or gambling, or otherwise unlawful in any manner whatever;
*harm minors in any way;
*infringes any patent, trademark, copyright or other proprietary rights;
*threatens the unity, integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states, or public order or causes incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence or prevents investigation of any offence or is insulting any other nation”.

The specification could not be more sweeping and catch-all. Anything could be described as “grossly harmful”, “harassing”, “blasphemous”, “defamatory”, “ethnically objectionable” or “disparaging”.

For instance, the Internet could be happy hunting grounds for those who today object to every other commercial film on the ground that it hurts their sensitivities. Harsh criticism of the state of affairs in any part of the country could be interpreted as threatening public order. Criticism of the regime or policies with any foreign country could be described as harmful of friendly relations with that country.

The list could go on.

At this rate, bloggers like me would have to face multiple charges for expressing our views, everyday!

Full story at,

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/editorial/op-ed/save-free-speech-cyberspace-728